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Yesterday I had a great conversation with Aaron Hall, a policy analyst at The Enough Project, a Washington, D.C. advocacy group. Enough focuses on the crises in Sudan, Chad, and elsewhere in Africa, and Hall told me about its work combatting "conflict minerals" in eastern Congo.

For decades activists have pressured companies to keep better track of their supply chains, since natural resources often originate in countries that have loose or nonexistent regulation around labor conditions and environmental impact. (When I was reporting in Bolivia in the fall, I spent a week talking to children who work in mines. You can read that story here.)

A decade ago public pressure on the diamond industry—and outrage surrounding “blood diamonds” that fueled armed conflicts in countries like Angola and Sierra Leone— led, in part, to the creation of the Kimberley Process, which regulates trade in rough diamonds.

Today activist groups like The Enough Project are focusing on the “three Ts” — tin, tungsten and tantalite. These minerals are used in mobile phones, laptops, tablets and other electronic devices. Many of the minerals originate in eastern Congo, where armed groups use proceeds from the mines to fund ongoing, deadly conflict in the region.

Conflict minerals are tricky to trace because they’re usually smuggled out of the Congo through neighboring countries— like Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania—and across the Indian Ocean to smelting companies in China, India, Malaysia and Thailand.

Once the minerals are smelted— or refined into metals— they can no longer be traced. Hall describes the smelter stage as the “choke point” in the supply chain. His group wants smelting companies to audit their supply chains, which would relieve some of the tracing burden for end users like Apple and HP.